


Touching On Truths

by drjenny88



Category: Red Rising Trilogy - Pierce Brown
Genre: M/M, Mustang (briefly), On-Again/Off-Again Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 22:52:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6061114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drjenny88/pseuds/drjenny88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the events of Morning Star.</p>
<p>Darrow isn't finished with Cassius just yet. He has long known that his old friend harbours depths that go beyond the family name, but is a shared understanding ever truly enough?<br/>In which Cassius and Darrow work out if their world views can really ever sit side by side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touching On Truths

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the awesome sausage that is @theoryofrome - happy birthday, Philosopher!

"Darrow."

He says my name softly, but we are attuned to one another; I can always sense where he is in a room, just as I know he always looks for my presence. It's one of the reasons we fight so well, that awareness of each other's space.

"Was any of it real?" he asks when I turn to look at him.

I consider my answer. Cassius watches me through narrowed eyes until he sees me settle on the truth. I know by the way he slides back into his seat and scrubs a hand through his curly hair, not quite relaxed but at ease.

"It wasn't supposed to be."

I find myself crossing to sit near him, so close that our knees brush together. Neither of us moves away. Our truths always have come more easily with contact.

"I hated you all to begin with," I tell him, and it feels like a confession of sorts. "I thought you were pampered, spoiled, that you couldn't possibly understand how my people toiled, how we suffered and bled and died for the world you took so lightly. I wanted a war that would destroy all Golds, a war that would show you what it felt like to be in the lowest pit of Society."

He nods thoughtfully. "So what changed?"

"I did. We did."

He puts a hand on my thigh, squeezes gently and releases his grip but leaves the hand in place. "This?" he asks.

It draws a dry chuckle from low in my throat. "Partly," I admit. "You were... unexpected."

He squeezes my leg again, but I push his hand aside.

"You still hold too high an opinion of yourself," I grunt, and he dips his head in acquiescence and keeps his elegant hands to himself. "I was in touch with the Sons around the time they bombed the Lost City, when it became clear they would sacrifice their own for the cause."

Cassius sucks in his lower lip and releases it with a wet popping sound. "You had thought the revolution would only hurt the highColors," he guesses.

"It sounds naive now," I admit. "But I did. I thought the lowColors would rise up, that my purpose was to provide access through Society, that I was building the steps for them all to climb. I thought we would bring Gold to its knees and that freedom would be, I don't know, not easy exactly, but not like this either."

"So the Sons let you down," he murmurs. "Augustus no longer wanted you. And Virginia was with me." His hand jerks, as if he has gone to great effort to prevent it moving. "That's why you took a chance on civil war; you thought you could bring Gold down on your own."

I laugh shortly. "I hoped you'd take yourselves down and I could carry the rebellion through the hole you'd leave behind."

"You can't carry a whole rebellion on your own."

"I'm not alone. I have Sevro."

Cassius hums low in his throat. "You and Goblin and a host of unruly allies you must surely be aware could turn on you at any moment."

I shrug, but it is half hearted at best.

"The Sons of Ares have been formidable," Cassius concedes. "The Sovereign has been concerned about them since we were children, before that even. But like you, she now knows they don't care about civilian casualties. I know you realise your own lives have become forfeit too."

"Politics was always Julian's game," I say. "Not yours."

It's a low blow and I know it. Cassius flinches at his brother's name.

"I can't save you," he says and the words are cold and hard as duroSteel. "We both know it's too late for that - they've already martyred you once, after all. But you don't have to bring everyone down with you. The Telemanuses. Your precious Howlers. Mustang."

"They can all make up their own minds which side they're on. As can you," I add pointedly. "You can see the flaws in the Society, I know you can. Their rules didn't help you at the Institute - I won there with my 'host of unruly allies', as I'm sure you recall. Their rules didn't help Julian in the Passage. Why should we continue to sacrifice for their cause?"

"To keep us strong," he replies automatically. "To make sure we stay at the forefront of evolution."

His Gold sigils catch the light as he gesticulates. I watch the spray of patterns dance over the ceiling of Roque's stateroom.

"It inhibits the evolution of our species," I point out. "Genetic manipulation and enforced selection mean that any outliers are culled before their evolutionary impact can be determined."

Cassius frowns at me. "I attended a lecture on Luna where Roque once made that very same argument on the opposite side of the debate. He referred to it as controlled evolution, the Society as humanity's guiding hand. He described us as 'echoes of the Gods of old'."

"Roque was too caught up in how he believed things should be." I cannot quite keep the bitterness out of my voice. "You and I see things as they truly are. The Golden Society is just gilding, a thin coat riding on top of layers of much grittier, hardier stuff."

"And you're the man to scrape off that layer?"

He is scoffing at me, not in his words but his tone. I should drop the conversation but part of me still wants him to understand. I need him on my side in a way that feels more vital than any of my other friends.

"I have to be," I tell him. "It could have been anyone once, when I was freshly Carved, even after your family humiliated me in the Academy. But too much has changed." I stand and lean against one of Roque's ridiculous marble pillars, looking down at Cassius now instead of sitting beside him. "It's like the way we shifted the paradigm in the Institute; the Sons follow me now because I know where we're going. I see what Eo always hoped I would, the way to bring her dream to fruition. I can do this, Cassius."

He holds my gaze for a long moment, too long for either of us to risk speaking and breaking whatever we each believe we can see. Then his eyes sweep my body and he reminds me that he was born to be a predator, that he can't help but look for weaknesses. I stay silent and wonder which of us will move first, whether our old bonds really are as strong as I think. It occurs to me that perhaps I have misjudged my old friend, after all; maybe it was simply his good breeding that led Cassius to drape his cloak over me in the Jackal's lair.

As it happens, we step forwards together, our hands rising as if attached to magnets and our fingers folding together in the space between us. I almost use my stronger grip to pull him in to me, but he has danced away before my muscles respond to the thought.

"Cassius."

I follow him to the bookcase, stepping up close behind him. He pretends to be suddenly interested in Roque's poetry collection, tracing the spines of the old books with his fingertips.

"The Society only aims for the highest good." He hovers over a collection of Aristotle, worrying at the ancient fabric binding with his nails. "The virtue of the state can only hold when each part also follows suit. The chain is necessary to bind our species together, not just because Gold made it so, but because humanity needs hierarchy to survive, to achieve. The slave is but a part of the master, an extension of the body."

"I see we've left truth behind again. Could we try something you actually believe in rather than just parroting Society lines?"

The curl of his lip mirrors my own, but where I was sneering Cassius is lascivious. He drops his gaze very deliberately from my mouth to my crotch.

"As I recall," he says, drawing the words out slow and steady the way I would once have sucked out pitviper venom. "There was always one thing that could draw us together even when we could agree on nothing else."

I trace the scar down his face and linger at the corner of his mouth. His lips are pursed and slick and he closes them over two of my fingers as soon as I give him the opportunity. I watch his face as he suckles, barely suppressing a groan as his tongue demonstrates its own version of the Willow Way. His eyes remain fixed on mine.

There is a hiss behind us as the door opens. I take several quick steps backwards and dislodge one of Roque's meteorite trophies; it skitters across the floor and into the atrium, coming to rest at the feet of the incomers.

"Oh no, are we interrupting?" Victra drawls, disaffectedly examining her fingernails.

Mustang shoots her a glance fierce enough to wilt even the hardiest haemanthus. Victra rolls her eyes and makes a point of stalking out of the room and continuing to stomp loudly all the way down the corridor. Holiday throws me an uncharacteristically sheepish shrug, her expression all apology, and then she slinks back into the hallway and into her sentry persona. The other Greys with them exchange a shared nod and fan out across the atrium.

Cassius smirks, his eyes wide in mock innocence. "I was just expressing my admiration of Darrow's massive-"

I cough pointedly.

"-sense of self-importance," he finishes smoothly.

From the doorway, Mustang makes an odd choking sound. I choose not to analyse it. Cassius, however, seizes the moment.

"His prowess is really quite remarkable, don't you think, Virginia?" His tone is darkly sardonic. "For a Red, I mean."

I walk away from him and lean heavily on the glass table. My sweating palms smear the once-pristine surface.

"This was a waste of time," I say. "Take him back to his cell."

Mustang snorts. "Not a chance."

I turn to glare at her and she looks so smug that I think for a moment about throwing the glass table at her. I think about it for slightly too long.

"Let's not destroy Roque's room," Cassius suggests, reading my mind. "Even if his tastes are a tad... perplexing."

I grit my teeth and stalk over to the maroon-coloured armchair, dropping my body into its velvet embrace in a manner I suspect is slightly more Pixie than Peerless. Mustang is looking at me, waiting for my decision although she must know there is none to make.

"I'll call when we're finished," I nod.

I watch her retreating back until the Greys file out and the door clicks shut behind her. Cassius drapes himself across me in the chair, his eyes fervid, daring me to push him away. He gives an exaggerated shrug when I don't respond.

"You took the seat nearest the liquor."

I can never tell if he intends to lighten my mood or if it is merely a side effect of his company. It goes against the grain either way, but it feels good to have the darkness lifted, even temporarily. I make a conscious effort to push thoughts of our short-lived interruption aside.

"So your latest excuse for getting close to me is that you're now a raging alcoholic?" I jest.

"I don't see you spending all your time with Aja," he shoots back.

I'd forgotten how quick witted he could be, how good it feels to spar with him.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Until you've had to travel through the Obsidian lands with Eaters on your trail and only a psychopathic Fury for company, you can't possibly expect to understand my complex relationship with alcohol."

He leans over me and, one-handed, pours himself a tumbler of the Lagavulin. He drinks half the liquid down in a single sip, then presses the glass to my lips. I don't hesitate in swallowing down the rest. Cassius arches a perfect Gold eyebrow.

"Thought you might have at least considered I'd poison you," he mutters. "That was risky, even for you, Reaper."

"Until you've been balanced on a clawDrill at the tail end of an eighteen hour shift, hanging over a pit hundreds of miles deep, sweating so hard your hands slide over the controls and so tired you can't even see properly, let alone think straight, you can't possibly understand my relationship with adrenaline."

There is a beat, where he shifts on my lap and his eyes rake my face as surely as if he'd used his fingernails. A beat where I press my lips tightly together and curl my fingers into the high collar of his shirt. A beat, one thump of two muscular hearts in no longer perfect Gold bodies. A beat, and then Cassius is kissing me.

It is not the first time and yet it feels new; it is the first time since he found out who I really am. There is a fresh urgency about him that makes me want to slow things down.

He changes position, kneeling astride me to bring our hips together. I grip his waist and stand, and Cassius wraps his legs around me instinctively. I carry him through the set of rooms and lay him back onto Roque's bed. It's a dominant move but the only one I can make that will shift Cassius from his strategy. Even now we are still playing games.

*

It was different in the Institute, when it really was new between us. It began innocuously enough, friends seeking comfort in the only place we could without showing weakness to the others. Impossible to lead once it's clear you need support as much as anyone else does. Cassius and I recognised that even then, and so we turned that need inwards, one more thing to hold us together.

 

"There were seven of us, you know," Cassius spoke through the darkness. "Seven Bellona siblings. And yet it was always my bed Julian climbed into when he was afraid, always me he came to when he was hurt."

"He trusted you," I told him. "It was obvious how much he looked up to you."

"He believed everything I told him, even ridiculous things." He made a sound that was part laughter and part choked sob.

I almost told him about Kieran then, about knowing what it was to look out for a brother as if he was an extension of yourself and not his own person. Then I remembered that was the old Darrow, the dead boy of Lykos not the heir of Andromedus.

"He trusted me to protect him."

Instead of replying, I found myself slipping into Cassius's bed, holding him tight until his shaking had passed and then pressing dry kisses to his brow. It wasn't dissimilar to the way I might once have comforted Eo and yet it did not feel like a betrayal. Holding Cassius that night felt like finding a new home in this foreign, Golden world.  
It was not a surprise when my friend slid a hand over my jaw and pulled our mouths together. Not a surprise when we found our way into each other's clothing, his lips and fingers following the contours of my body, my less practised hands mirroring his movements.

 

We spent night after night together like that, taking solace in one another when there was none to be found in the early days of that grim game. Tactus held the castle; in the watch tower, Cassius and I held each other.

*

He writhes beneath me, trying to coax me into playing by his rules. When I pin his arms above his head, he lets me hold both his wrists beneath just one of my palms. We both know he could free himself from my grasp, but instead he arches his back and grinds his hips against my own.

"Now, now," I murmur into the smooth skin of his throat. "You've got to earn that."

He chuckles and his chest quivers deliciously beneath my hand. I had been drawing what constellations I could remember across his body, but the sensation of his laughter pulls me back to myself, into this moment and away from the wider picture that is not currently my concern.

He tips his head and catches my earlobe between his teeth, nipping the skin and forcing me to turn to face him.

"Ah," he says. "There you are."

Our mouths clash together now. Our lips are at war, pressing together and retreating over and over until the battle lines become blurred and our skirmish is little more than a distant supernova.

Cassius reclaims his hands and uses them to chart my new body. He maps his way across my skin as if I had not changed at all from the perfect boy he explored so thoroughly in our early days together. I close my eyes and let my head fall back onto Roque's brocade sheets.

"No you don't," Cassius scolds me. "You're still too clothed for that."

He's right; he has made short work of my shirt and his jumpsuit took mere moments to remove, but my trousers have a scarabSkin lining. I arch my body and our hands dance together over the fastenings, shedding the last barrier between us.

Cassius takes control then. He guides my hands over his muscled shoulders, slides them down his back and then lower still until I am cupping his buttocks. He grins wickedly, kisses me once - slow and deep, all tongue - and uses the leverage to hook our bodies together. He coils his legs around me, sliding over my thighs. My breathing falters as he settles his groin against mine and then we are kissing once more and breathing is the least of my concerns.

We maintain the guise of control for as long as we are able, but really it is not long until Cassius and I have been reduced to husks of ourselves, rutting against one another with a sort of desperate need I thought I had lost many moons ago.

I touch him everywhere. I find I cannot help myself. My mouth follows the trail my hands blaze over his skin, scouring his body with the red heat of the mines just as he bathes me in the golden glow of the sun. We burn together, clinging and panting.

Cassius comes first, my name a hollow rasp on his lips. I feel the liquid warmth of him on my stomach, the stroke of his tongue on the spot just above my collarbone, the pressure of his fingers high up on my inner thigh, and within seconds I join him.

He kisses me while I am still groaning my release and I grin into his insistent mouth. When I open my eyes, I see that he is smiling too, his cheeks ruddy with our exertions.

"Why can't we settle all our debates like this?" he mock grumbles, rolling onto his side and propping himself up onto an elbow.

"So it's a Bacchanalian rebellion you'd support." I lean in to kiss the soft skin over his tricep.

He narrows his eyes but his mouth is still laughing, ruining the stern expression he had intended. "You're incorrigible."

"A pain in the scrotum is how my uncle usually phrased it."

Cassius uses his toe to nudge my balls and crows delightedly when I gasp in response. He tugs me in with his free arm and I rest against him.

"There are flaws in the Society," Cassius says idly, once I have settled and our bodies are touching from toe to shoulder. "But you cannot simply knock down the structure. Rebuilding must start from the inside out."

I look at him as the light of a new star passes across us, flickering restlessly through the windows of Roque's rooms and fading away just as swiftly. Cassius's face is fixed towards the ceiling, but his eyes have gone much further away, to a place I cannot reach. It will be up to him alone to make the journey back.

*

One day we will stand together, maybe on Luna, the Morning Star and the Morning Knight. I have always shone more clearly against the backdrop of his darkness; he told me once that he felt the same about me. There is an inky tint to our souls, like the dye Stained Obsidians use to draw skulls over their skin; like my friend Ragnar, Cassius and I have both fought against the nature of our birth for the things we believe to be right. His version of goodness has not always married up to mine, but we are connected just the same. Brothers, we once said, but our link runs deeper than that.

When the time comes, we will say goodbye - I have long known Cassius cannot live soundly in a world of my making. But perhaps his hand will steal into mine before we part. His lips might graze my fingers in a way that will remind me of our other goodbye, back when we were children at the Institute, where he pressed his own knuckles to his lips and declared our blood feud. I will not stand by and let him leave a second time. Instead, I will seize his mouth as I once seized the Mars standard: with gentle sadness, with a promise of more.

We will say goodbye, but wherever Cassius chooses to settle, his story and mine will not be done. Not all scars heal, after all, and we have borne countless wounds at one another's hands. Wounds that will call to each other across the stars.


End file.
